Serena Altschul:
I looked at old tapes of Perry Farrell's
interview from 1991, and he was talking about
what Lollapalooza was gonna be and, one of the
things he said, sort of like,prophetically, was
that it was gonna have to evolve and change morph
and do different things. Do you feel like it's
been able to do that at all, particularly from
last year to this year? Jonathan Davis: I
think so from last year because last year were
like, this -, bands like Metallica and
Soundgarden, it wasn't like a real Lollapalooza
vibe because it seems to me that Lollapalooza's
been about cutting edge bands, ones on the
underground, and that's what I think he based
that whole thing on and last year really just
wasn't all about that. And this year, now that
he's back on, you can tell, there's so many
different, diverse music groups here, so...
Serena:
What do you think of the line-up, it's everything
from rock and rap, and dance music, and you
guys...
Jonathan:
That's how a festival should be.
Serena:
You guys just recently finished touring in
Australia?
Jonathan: Australia,
Europe, everywhere.
Serena:
And you did a lot of festivals and shows. How
does a festival differ, as far as this and other
shows you've played? Is it different at all or is
it pretty much the same?
David: The
food's worse.
Jonathan:
The food's worse.
David:
Weather's worse.
Jonathan:
The weather's worse over there.
Fieldy:
But the crowds are great.
Jonathan:
The crowds are crazy, but I think here, this
festival's more diverse than the ones in Europe
for the fact that it's all about the same like, I
mean, say the Dynamo Festival, it's all heavy,
heavy, heavy metal bands, there's like... It just
depends. Like Essential was all alternative Brit
pop-rock stuff and then we got on that. It's
different.
Serena:
Yeah, a number of the people I've spoken to sort
of have like mixed feelings about what
Lollapalooza is or has become. Do you have mixed
feelings, do you like what it's doing or you feel
like it's sort of whatever?
David: I
think it's doing just fine, it's been changing
every year, in a little bit different vibe, it's
doing good. It's the coolest tour for a summer
festival I've ever seen. It always has been.
Serena: A
lot of bands who are playing Lollapalooza for
their first time years back felt like there was
some kind of like mystique about Lollapalooza,
there's something a little different. Do you
still feel like there is a mystique? Or are you
sort of over that?
David: I
think it's kind of mystique in the way that all
the different bands that are playing, like say if
there's a fan that's just into Snoop and he's
never heard of us, it's kind of mystique because
this person's getting ready to go to a big
festival, these bands of different styles of
music they've never heard before. So I think that
way it's kind of mystique.
Serena: I
just interviewed Snoop and he said he's really
excited to hear you guys. Are there any bands
you're looking forward to seeing and listening
to?
Fieldy:
Yeah, we're missing 'em right now.
David:
Right now we wanna be on there watching 'em.
Brian: I
wanna see Tool, I've never seen 'em before, heard
a lot of good things about 'em.
Jonathan:
Tool. I wanna check out Orbital too
Fieldy:
Yeah, Orbital got a huge disco ball, the biggest
one I ever seen in my life. That thing's as big
as my house.
Jonathan:
Definitely.
Serena:
They need like a crane to hang it from.
Fieldy:
It's so huge.. it's HUGE!
Jonathan:
It's huuuge!
Serena:
What does Lollapalooza mean to you? Does it mean
anything to you other than a great festival where
people hear varied music?
Jonathan:
That's about it.
Fieldy: It
means like, drink all day.
Jonathan: Drink
all day and get a chance for people to see
different styles of music that they haven't seen
before.
James Shaffer
(a/k/a Munky): Yeah, I think it means like,
bringing a lot of different people together. I
think that's what Perry's original idea was: to
bring a lot of different styles of music together
and uh, just so everybody would have a good time
and appreciate the different styles of music and
open their minds to some different stuff.
David: I
think it means spending the summer in hot-a**
Africa.
Fieldy:
Can you say a**?
Serena: We
did an interview with Tricky recently and he was
just saying, and maybe you feel this way too, I
don't know, that he was a little concerned about
how the crowd was gonna' take him. He was like
"Okay, I think this is gonna be, like, all
Tool fans and Korn fans and they're not gonna'
get what I'm doing." Is that a concern at
all? Or you feel like "Okay, this is gonna
be all Snoop fans and they're not gonna get what
we're doing?"
Fieldy: You know,
if that ever happens to us, it makes us push
harder and want to win the crowd over. It doesn't
matter. We'll go out if nobody's heard of us and
we'll just, we'll push harder and make 'em like
us. That's all you gotta do. It's all good.
Jonathan:
Doesn't matter.
Serena:
When you were approached to do Lolla, like, why
did you want to do it, I mean, you guys have a
huge following?
Fieldy:
'Cuz the line-up was good.
Serena:
Right.
Fieldy: We
like the line-up, it was good, good variety.
Serena: Do
you think it somehow represents sort of a state
of fragmented music these days? You know, there
was that whole grunge movement for a period and
other periods had their movements but right now
really seems like there's so many varied kinds of
music and they're all sort of popular...
Jonathan:
That's good. To me it is. That's good for me. It
means people are opening their minds up a little
bit and just not listening to one style of music
and I think that's what it should be about.
Fieldy: I
hope they don't try to label our music something
stupid like "grunge." We're just KoRn.
Serena: I
know you've been really involved in Internet
stuff right from the beginning. Is that still a
priority, are you using the Internet?
Jonathan:
Yeah, there's still stuff going on. We just did a
live broadcast from London, we played a show
there. It's just another tool to get out to
people, for us and there's a lot of kids out
there that are on the Internet.
James: The
other night I stayed up 'til like, 6 in the
morning talkin' to all these kids and then I was
like "Okay, I'm gonna go now," type in,
like, I'm a one-finger typer so I'm like "oh
sh*t," it's taking me like an hour to say a
sentence. I stayed up one night 'til like 6
talking to some kids, it was real cool.
Serena: You've
been touring pretty much since like October of
last year, '96, like when your "Life is
Peachy" came out...anything new, like you
guys working on something coming out really soon,
maybe this fall?
Fieldy: We
just did a song for "The Spawn." That's
the only thing that we've done new.
Serena:
Any plans for doing a new album?
Fieldy:
September.
Jonathan:
September. After 'Palooza we're gonna go into the
studio and write a new album.
James: I'm
gonna start writing it, but you guys can play
what I tell ya'.
Fieldy: Okay.
Thanks Munky.
Serena: You
mentioned working on the "Spawn"
soundtrack, you were working with the Dust
Brothers, do you stay in touch with them on that?
How did that work out?
Fieldy: We
just did it up. We just did it.
Serena:
How'd it go?
Jonathan:
It was awesome.
Fieldy: It
was phat.
Jonathan: It cam
out really phat. They were really impressed, they
liked it. We just went into a studio for like,
the whole song probably took about 5 hours to do
everything.
Serena:
Really?
Jonathan:
Yeah, we just wrote the song, we gave it to Dust
Brothers, Dust Brothers did what they had to do
with it, did vocals and it was done.
Serena:
Was that it? Do you stay in contact with them?
Are you talking about doing other stuff?
Jonathan:
Not, no it's not like that, it's like, when we
get hooked up together, we get hooked up. It's
like, it's so hard, we're doing so much stuff.
It's hard to keep in touch with people.
Fieldy:
We're really busy and they're really busy so...
Jonathan:
What happens, happens.
Serena:
Your third single is coming out or is like about
to come out, "Good God." Video? Any
ideas for like a video? Are you gonna shoot
anything soon for that?
David: No
more videos.
Jonathan:
No videos.
Serena: No
videos? Okay.
Fieldy:
Maybe on the next record.
Jonathan:
Next record probably.
Serena: I
wanna ask about your lyrics 'cuz I know that
you're really not into writing them out and
letting people...
David:
Well, the stuff I wrote about was uh, no...
Serena:
I'm totally cool with that, not disclosing
lyrics, but I want to know why. For the fans who
wanna' know what it is you're saying, I mean I
know they're gonna get their own thing out of it
but...
Jonathan:
Yeah that's exactly why I didn't put the lyrics
out. It seems like when I get a cd, I'm listening
to lyrics and I'm reading, I'm just reading 'em,
it's like "okay that's' it." I think
music's something that every individual has their
own meaning to the song. They can come up with
whatever the hell I'm saying and that's the
beauty of it and that's what I wanna keep there.
Serena: So
if you were to say to like the bazillions of fans
that like look at you record and like "Where
are the lyrics?" What would you say to them?
Jonathan:
Stop being so lazy and just listen. They're right
there.
Serena:
Despite what people may think, you guys are a
family band, like you all, several of you have
kids.
Fieldy:
Yup.
Jonathan:
Yup.
Serena:
That's just, when I found that out I was like
"They do? Really? Those guys are dads?"
Jonathan:
Heck yeah.
Serena:
Isn't that sort of a shock to some of your...
Fieldy:
The three dads right here.
Jonathan:
It's the three dads.
James: I'm
raising me right now a serial killer, little kid,
I'm a' start him out with kitty cats and little
things like that.
Jonathan:
No, we do have children, everybody has children.
I mean, there's always been this thing about
artists not having kids or whatever. It's like
bad thing -- hell no! We have lives too and
having a child's the most incredible thing you
can ever do in your life so...
James:
Yeah, it's kinda like a science experiment.
Jonathan:
Let's see how they turn out
Serena:
Alright, I know one of you is a really big Snoop
fan, anybody else here have big fans, like people
you wanna see here perform other than Snoop?
Jonathan:
We wanna see Tool, Orbital...
David:
Prodigy, Devo
Jonathan:
All the ones that're comin' on. The whole tour...
